Duke - Worried about your friend, Joe, that he actually knows about this attempt to manufacture a tradition. The pig was made by some candy store in a (even then) touristy town of Saratoga, New York in the late 1800's. People went there to "take" the waters - (disgusting stuff that is laxative). Now they go more for the famous horse race track and expensive everything. The pig faded but recently has been brought back and marketed aggressively, if Joe is any indication. It has become something to give someone when you don't have any idea what to give. Smashing piggy sweets with a tiny hammer.

farfalla wrote:Duke - Worried about your friend, Joe, that he actually knows about this attempt to manufacture a tradition. The pig was made by some candy store in a (even then) touristy town of Saratoga, New York in the late 1800's. People went there to "take" the waters - (disgusting stuff that is laxative). Now they go more for the famous horse race track and expensive everything. The pig faded but recently has been brought back and marketed aggressively, if Joe is any indication. It has become something to give someone when you don't have any idea what to give. Smashing piggy sweets with a tiny hammer.

Joe's a metaphorical friend, made up for the sake of argument, but hey.

I'm not at all surprised. I didn't quite think that those companies in those damn catalogues were smart enough to make up their very own "tradition", but I figure they've got just enough brains to pick up some defunct old thing and re-market it as some wonderful little custom. I've never heard of it, nor has anyone I know, but then again, I don't get any catalogues.

Duke

"In the first place, God made idiots. That was for practice. Then he made school boards."

--Mark Twain

He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you.

--Friedrich Nietzsche

"If it turns out that there is a God, I don't think that he's evil. But the worst that you can say about him is that basically he's an underachiever."

That peppermint pig has got nothing on the Catalan (Catalonia) "Shit Log" known as Tio de Nadal

Wikipedia wrote:Beginning with the Feast of the Immaculate Conception (December , one gives the tiÃ³ a little bit to "eat" every night and usually covers him with a little blanket so that he will not be cold at night.

On Christmas day or, depending on the particular household, on Christmas eve, one puts the tiÃ³ partly into the fireplace and orders it to "shit" (the fire part of this tradition is no longer as widespread as it once was, since many modern homes do not have a fireplace). To make him "shit", one beats him with sticks, while singing various songs of TiÃ³ de Nadal.

The tiÃ³ does not drop larger objects, as those are brought by the Three Wise Men. It does leave candies, nuts and torrons. Depending on the part of Catalonia, it may also give out dried figs. When nothing is left to "shit", it drops a salt herring, a head of garlic, an onion or "urinates". What comes out of the tiÃ³ is a communal rather than individual gift, shared by everyone present.

On a side note, it seems like those Catalans have some kind of scaatalogical complex. They are obsessed with poop. They put these things called Caganers in their nativity scenes. Caganer means "Defecator", and it consists of a little figurine taking a dump.